Virtual Thought

Seems like the Army is rolling out the robotic army in less than a decade.

“They don’t get hungry,” said Gordon Johnson of the Pentagon’s Joint Forces Command. “They’re not afraid. They don’t forget their orders. They don’t care if the guy next to them has just been shot. Will they do a better job than humans? Yes.” . The robot soldier is coming. . The Pentagon predicts that robots will be a major fighting force in the American military in less than a decade, hunting and killing enemies in combat. Robots are a crucial part of the U.S. Army’s effort to rebuild itself as a 21st-century fighting force, and a $127 billion project called Future Combat Systems is the biggest military contract in American history.

Fantastic. I wonder if I could stomach working on killer robot firmware?

Do you hate RealPlayer and the way it installs a bunch of crap on your system? Sure, we all do.

So go download RealAlternative instead.

This is a great development tool: FitNesse.

As an example of how it wires up to code check out this page.

My friend John has sent me what he calls the BEST HEADLINE EVER.

Today had its beautiful moments and its terrible moments.

You should read both of those all the way through.

Philip K. Dick has a book named Galactic Pot Healer. The book is a good combination of Dick’s dry style and the weird speed-freak ramblings that I love about his writing.

As pointed out on this blog (which has a great name), the book was surprisingly prescient for its time: it predicted a thoroughly modern game that I’ve played many times where automated translating engines like Babelfish produce odd-sounding translations when you run through a cycle of English-to-Spanish, Spanish-to-Chinese, Chinese-to-Greek, Greek-to-English (for example)... and it predicted Viagra (which I am most definitely not linking to… I will not do my comment spammers any favors).

Think about this, though: doesn’t “Galactic Pot Healer” sound like an artifact of the mis-translation game? What do you think that phrase meant in its language of origin (maybe English)? I’ve been thinking about this, on and off, for a while and I’m not coming up with any answers.

Weird.

A coworker of mine bequeathed upon me her small tin of wasabi peas.
“I do not want these wasabi peas,” I told her.
“Too bad,” said she. “They are now yours.”
“Get these devil peas away from me!”

However, upon further reflection, I have come to love my wasabi peas… especially since I’ve quit smoking a couple of weeks ago. The fire of wasabi on my tongue sure beats the burning of smoke in my lungs.

Wasabi’s major component is horseradish. How much do you know about horseradish?